January CW Competition entry

Vince Quigley isn’t the kind of man who appreciates a knock on his bedroom window at three in the morning.

Poor Vince snapped suddenly out of a deep sleep when hearing the rat-a-tat-tat of a fierce gale barging into the first floor bedroom window of his mock tudor village house.

He rolled his stubbly chin around on his pillow as he heard the unmistakable sound of trees flailing in the roar of the wind.

Within seconds his brain had reawakened to the horrible dilemma that had struck him numb as he had earlier sat in the garden on an otherwise splendid summer’s evening.

Mac or Tom. Mac or Tom. One of them has to die.

Vince issued a sigh as the gust whooshed and rattled the roof tiles. He placed his head face down on the pillow and felt dragged into it by the agony of the decision awaiting him.

They had both upset the Gaffer. It is what he would want. They know the rules that they play by. Vince had to be tough.

Things weren’t going well for the group, there just wasn’t room at the top for the two of them.

The competition from the Russians was tough, Vince thought, but they had both made mistakes.

Mac’s strength and charisma had made him very popular with customers but he had become way too self-indulgent, there was no doubting that. He had been mixing with too many people, had let his guard down. The Gaffer said the leaks to the Russians hadn’t come from his circle of girlfriends but we all knew he was simply playing for time.

Vince’s weary head whirred as the crash of a falling dustbin reverberated through the village.

And there was Tom. Tommy, Tom, Tom. At one point the group would have been nothing without his brains but his big plan to change the distribution centres had dragged everyone down. If he really knew how to beat the taxman what on earth was behind the photo that oik Sergei produced of him supping whisky with that suit from the revenue? Hell, they know more about the group than they know about themselves.

Rain now joined the chorus of natural voices keeping Vince awake as it pitter pattered down the double-glazed windowpane.

“Tom-Tom-Tooom”, Vince thought he heard the wind cry, just before a burst of rain shouted “Mac-Mac-Mac”.

Vince’s mind began to recall the faces of people praising the pair over the years; the joy people took in recounting tales of their sinister work. What could he tell them all?

There would be anger and recriminations whichever one he chose, he realized. He could profit from the resulting chaos, he was sure of that, but could he really survive without them both?

And could he see it through?

Maybe I’m getting soft, he thought, while his heart answered by pulsating and pushing the sweat around his torso.

He had been lounging in a deckchair with only the smoke of a nearby barbecue blotting the perfection in the sky the moment the phone rang the previous evening.

“Hello Vince, it’s Nigel Jones here. I’ve got to be quick but there have been discussions here and the upshot is we think one of your main men needs to be removed from the scene.”

Vince had dropped the phone in alarm and jolted indoors. He had paced around the house in a flummoxed state, crisscrossing his squeaky staircase, for what seemed like an eternity before falling asleep.

Vince started to think things through, step-by-step. Mac would be the easy one to lead astray, but how would you ever get him alone?

“Give me strength”, Vince mumbled into the empty room. The tintinnabulation of the village church drifted faintly into his ears before a stern gust silenced the sounds of the bells.

He turned his head on the pillow once again, desperate for relief.

There was a chill in the room now. Amid his panic that evening he had completely forgotten to close most of the windows.

Then a shiver ran through Vince. I forgot to lock the door as well, he thought.

Then incredibly, at around half-past-three, things started to move rather quickly.

A cat squealed in the lane as the low hum of an approaching engine cut through the wind to meet the ears of an anxious Vince. A faint rustling, whirring sound like a pack of cards being shuffled sent Vince jolting out of the bed and glaring out of the window into the gloom.

He shot down the stairs and into the garden in a flash. Three seconds later, the wind carried his scream across the lane to a field. Nobody knows if the cattle heard it.

**************************

Plastic bags were swirling around the car park when Nigel Jones slotted his Japanese hatchback into a spot and jogged towards the office.

He could see the boss’s mood was every bit of foul as the brief call that morning had suggested.

“Quite a storm last night wasn’t it?” Nigel’s question tailed off as the boss’s smirk of disapproval became increasingly pronounced.

“There’ll be ten times the storm in here if we can’t fix this problem your friend Vince has got us into,” came the reply.

“I’ve got ten interns patrolling his village looking for the manuscript, but…” Nigel was cut short this time by a wince and a turn of the head.

“So let me get this straight. We’ve signed a 100,000 print run for a writer who can’t work a computer or remember to bring his work, sorry our work, indoors while the biggest gale in 37 years blows it to kingdom come one A4 sheet at a time?”

“And he blames us for that because we told him to bump off one of his favourite characters. Sent him into one of his panic attacks,” Nigel added.

*************************

It took a while for Vince to notice Bob amid the throng of drinkers when he entered the terrace in Marbella.

Round shades as big as panda eyes blocked all sight of his telltale scar, while the presence of a Latin beauty at his side seemed confusing when Vince had been told he had gone to Spain with Svetlana.

The two friends embraced each other while warming breeze ruffled the palm trees.

“So hang on, you want to go back over everything once again and imagine what would happen if Tom got killed?”

“That’s it” Vince said, as he pushed a hefty envelope under the table.

“See what a nut my writer amigo is?” Bob asked the lady to his right.

She didn’t appear to hear. Instead, the slender neck of Bob’s female friend arched as the figure of a tanned and suited male lurched into view.

Submissions for entry into the November 2012 Creative Writing Competition closed at Midnight on 30th. November 2012.
Voting can now commence and will continue until 11 p.m. on Saturday the 8th. December […]

October 18th. 2014.
A lunch for CW Group members took place today at the Priory Hotel in Portbury.
Members attending in person were Fizzeerascal, Giselle, Pavlovaqueen, Arche_tp, Charles Stuart, and Bleda. […]

Submissions for entry into the October 2012 Creative Writing Competition closed at Midnight on 31st.. October 2012.
Voting can now commence and will continue until 11 p.m. on Wednesday the 7th. of November […]